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March Listening

To be honest I kinda stopped listening to new music around the middle of the month because I was just really enjoying how this mix flowed and I didn’t want to add anything else to it.

James Place: Sense of an Ending

Dawn of Midi: Nix

Tame Impala: Let It Happen

Fieldhead: Northumblermand

Elvis Perkins: & Eveline

Jonas Munk: Absorb

Mark Rogers & Mary Byrne: Walk with Me

Stray Thoughts:

Best album of the month is Jonas Munk’s Absorb/Fabric/Cascade, three long busy synth ambient tracks that really feel like one very long ride.

Runners up: James Place’s Living on Superstition and the Loscil/Fieldhead split EP Fury and Hecla. The latter is interesting in that the two artists alternate tracks rather than filling one side of a record each. The whole thing hangs together very well.

February Listening

A slight tweak to my rulebook for these monthly mixes: they'll be confined to new releases going forward, rather than simply "new to me". The ratio has always been out of whack so why fight it. I have some more timeless mixes in the work for the three of you who will miss that element.

Still true however is that these playlists are not ranked, but ordered, so listening from beginning to end is the ideal. If there's a theme to this month it might be "in a lull"—I really like these tracks but if they have anything in common it is a kind of stasis. Don't fight it.

Nils Frahm: Peter

Unknown Mortal Orchestra: Multi-Love

Mind Over Mirrors: Regular Step on Snake River

Andrew Bird: Rising Water

Steve Gunn & the Black Twig Pickers: Trailways Ramble

Sam Prekop: Weather Vane

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: The Last Time I Saw Your Face

Stray Thoughts:

Best albums of the month are Sam Prekop's The Republic and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma's A Year with 13 Moons. Prekop is really finding his voice as an electronic artist, now that he seems to have left his soft jazz songwriting behind. The Republic is far more fulfilling than his last attempt at this sound, Old Punch Card. Meanwhile Cantu-Ledesma's album is an interesting ambient record made from synths and static and distortion. I hesitate to name drop for fear of creating false expectations but if you are a fan of Tim Hecker or Fennesz then you may find something rewarding here too.

My other favorite album of the month is Jose Gonzalez's new album (not reflected in this mix since I used it in January's mix). It's not terribly different from his old material, but that's fine.

 With Echolocations, Andrew Bird has now released four lengthy excursions or experiments since 2012's Break it Yourself, none of which feel like a proper followup. Echolocations is all instrumental; if you like his Useless Creatures record then you should be all over this.

KRANK 192: Disappears: Irreal (2015)

Disappears have been on a fairly steady upward trajectory for their first four full-lengths, introducing their aesthetic on the back-to-back releases Lux (KRANK 143) and Guider (KRANK 151), refining it on the excellent Pre Language (KRANK 164), and breaking out of it on the weird and creepy Era (KRANK 182), still their best album to date. Irreal picks up from Era in that Disappears seem to have outgrown the more straightforward rockers of their early releases. It's a testament to the band's steady evolution: Irreal  sounds like quintessential Disappears, and yet some of the most definitive elements of their early albums (i.e. riffs) are all but absent. Where past albums punched quick with succinct physicality, Irreal is more of a psychological terror. 

Credit a stabilized lineup for that progression. Disappears went through three drummers and two producers on their first four albums, but all the players from Era remain in place this time around. Drummer Noah Ledger (their third) in particular has found his legs with the band, showing that of all their past drummers (including Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley), Ledger is the bet fit for the group. Whereas Shelley and original drummer Graeme Gibson played crisp and tight, Ledger plays big, with a towering menace. He and bassist Damon Carruesco are the core of every track on Irreal.

Guitarist and frontman Brian Case seems happy to let that be so. As on many of the tracks on Era, Case forgoes the Wooden Shjips-like riffing that defined the band's early material in favor of howling feedback, skeletal harmonics, and swells of atmospheric noise. Vocally Case continues to move away from his old tough-dog barks toward a kind of carnival creep, guiding you through Irreal's hall of mirrors. And the structure of these songs fits right into that hall--they twist, contort, reflect. They almost never follow the traditional verse/chorus dichotomy that defined many past Disappears tracks.

The nice thing about having no pretensions toward professionalism is I can just revise my end-of-year list whenever I want. It needn’t be preserved in amber. So in the two months since I originally posted my favorite tracks of 2014, I heard a lot more music and five more songs deserved a place on my list. So I’ve revised my list. By now I’m more or less done putting concerted effort into hearing 2014 albums, so it’s probably safe to say the book is now closed on this mix.  

The mix is not ranked, but it is ordered. I tried to do something that has an arc to it, so I hope you’ll set aside the time to listen. (The additions, for the record, are Stanley Brinks, Amen Dunes, Steve Gunn, Blake Mills, and Eno/Hyde.)

Steve Moore: Logotone

Spoon: Rent I Pay

The New Pornographers: War on the East Coast

Temples: Shelter Song

Ryan Teague: Remote Outliers

White Rainbow: Killswitch

Actress: Rule

Angel Olsen: Unfucktheworld

Stanley Brinks and The Wave: Orange Juice

The New Mendicants: Sarasota

The War on Drugs: Red Eye

Hospitality: Last Words

Amen Dunes: Sixteen

Marissa Nadler: Firecrakers

Rebekka Karijord: Madrigal

A Winged Victory for the Sullen: Atomos VII

Sharon Van Etten: Your Love is Killing Me

Porya Hatami: After the Rain

Majical Cloudz: Your Eyes

Future Islands: Seasons (Waiting on You)

Wye Oak: Before

Fennesz: Bécs

Koen Holtkamp: Between Visible Things

Steve Gunn: Tommy’s Cargo

Beck: Waking Light

Blake Mills: Don’t Tell Our Friends About Me

Woods: Moving to the Left

The Growlers: Big Toe

Hamilton Leithauser: I Retired

Karen Gwyer: You Big

Eno / Hyde: Lilac

Hundred Waters: Murmurs

January Listening

The first part of the month was spent catching up with things I missed in 2014 (much like December was too). Then in mid-January the rush of the new kicked up. And wow, there's a lot of great stuff in 2015 already.

As usual, this mix is ordered for an ideal beginning-to-end experience. I like the ebb and flow of this one.

Jose Gonzalez: Leaf Off / The Cave (2015)

Aphex Twin: diskhat ALL prepared1mixed 13 (from Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt2, 2015)

Alessandro Cortini: Passatempo (from Sonno, 2014)

Panda Bear: Boys Latin (from Panda Bear vs the Grim Reaper, 2015)

Amen Dunes: Sixteen (from Love, 2014)

Disappears: Integration (from Irreal, 2015)

Marvin Ayres: Variation 3 (from Ultradian Rhythms, 2014)

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: Sundry (from Euclid, 2015)

Eno*Hyde: Lilac (from High Life, 2014)

Stray Thoughts:

Amen Dunes' Love wins the prize for Best Album from Last Year I Heard This Year (there's at least one every year, right?). I played that nonstop for much of the month.

I like the new Aphex Twin release more than Syro, for whatever that's worth.

I have the same reaction to every Panda Bear album: there are two or three total knockout tracks, and a bunch of songs I could readily do without. Grim Reaper starts strong but doesn't keep it up. Love this and a few others, though. And PS Cooper is all over this track.

Very excited to hear the new Jose Gonzalez album. His recent detour with Junip in the last few years is very underrated.